FAWM 2012 Song 1

The songs posted will not be staying permanently because they are demos written for the FAWM 2012 challenge. The good ones (if there are any) will end up being worked on properly and released at some point, by which time the demos will be long gone and most likely forgotten!

The demo can be heard in the ‘FAWM 2012" player in the sidebar.

The first song is called "Not on Your Life". Not much more to say about it really except it’s pretty much along the lines of being wise to the attempts of control by people/entities that (think they) are bigger or better than you.

Enjoy!

Songwriting Therapy: Restoring the Creative Flow

I don’t know when this all started. Maybe there was an element of it from the beginning, but lately I have been thinking about my current approach to writing songs, which is steeped in the process of improvisation.

Improvising can be quite a daunting task, especially if you know people are going to hear the results. I’m not the most adventurous of songwriters, sticking pretty much to fairly traditional sounds, but I have come to realize that improvisation brings out a braver, bolder me.

I loved composing music for years (still do), I loved writing songs for the last 3 years (still do) and now since writing songs alone I felt maybe I had exhausted my resource pool of ideas and inspiration. However improvisation has rescued me. Here’s how and why and it’s about more than just coming up with ideas.

Improvising has provided several positive effects on my songwriting. It helps me reach potential ideas that I may not have otherwise concocted by trying and as a by-product of that, it renders the whole notion of writer’s block obsolete. You can’t have writer’s block if you improvise because the point it not to start with your head, you start with how you feel, which brings me to another benefit I have received with this process.

Improvising helps me become a little braver, stronger and less worried about how my songs will be received. In a typical hour or two of improvising I can end up with, say five or ten songs or chunks of what potentially can become songs and of that number, maybe 1 will become a really good song. Of course, maybe none of them will, but every idea that jumps out as I am playing and/or singing is working for the greater good of my songwriting.

The biggest benefit is that I am emptying the trash can of any spurious thoughts that may be lurking in my mind. I think the very idea of something like writer’s block is that there is no room for inspiration to flow because the mind is too full of noise. The water needs changing, it becomes cloudy at times.

Have you ever been running so many applications on your computer that you get a system message saying "You are running out of virtual memory, please try closing some applications" etc.. ? It’s like that. When there is no buffer space left in your mind to act as a "parking space" for mind-noise, there is no channel for your inspiration to flow. It’s there, but it’s rooted to the spot. That’s why you can’t wait for inspiration, you have to restore the flow in the system to have any chance of regaining it. You can do that by letting go of writing that perfect song and just letting loose.

What is important to me regarding improvising is that it builds my confidence. The more at ease I am about allowing people to hear my "Crap" songs and random ideas, the better shape I’ll be in to wow them with a song that moves them and makes a lasting impression – hopefully.

I still haven’t worked my confidence up to improvising like this in front of a live audience. I haven’t played a song I already know live for a long time, let alone improvise, but I guess that could happen.

Improv to Improve

Improvisation. Regarding my songwriting, improvisation is something fairly new to me, but I have recently discovered how effective it is in a variety of ways.

This is always a busy, songwriting time of year for me and since becoming a father I am experiencing the pinch on available time to write, seeing as I am taking on the FAWM songwriting challenge again.

Having less time to spend with guitar over my shoulder and putting pen to paper I have found that I usually have a daily window from about 9 or 10pm until, well until I remember to look at the clock and tell myself I really should be in bed! On average though it gives me, say up to 4 hours each night to write a song, record a demo and post it up on the FAWM website to share with the songwriting community there.

Something I’d Like to Ad-Lib

With limited time and in an attempt to minimize the time taken twiddling my pen around my fingers, trying to come up with some good lyrics I have resorted to, within reason, making it up as I go along. I can always come up with melody and chord progressions, so laying down a guitar track and some guide drums takes no time at all. I then have a basic framework for a song; instrumentally a typical song structure – verses, choruses, bridge etc.

Then I just pick up the mic – my current choice is a hand-held Telefunken M80 (I love it) and start recording. So far it’s working. I’ve been pretty happy with the results so far and seeing as I am able to instantly share what I have written with a supportive songwriting crowd I can get feedback and pointers as to what can be improved or re-written. Winner!

So my conclusions from my experience is that improvisation is great for developing the ability to create more deliberate structure and I believe the secret to being able to deliver the goods via improvisation is having faith that you can do it. It’s not a big deal if your improvising by yourself in a recording environment because if your attempts sound a bit lame, nobody needs to hear it, so keep practicing and you will pull it off. I did, so anyone can.

I’m grateful for having less time for songwriting this year because it’s helped me grow as a songwriter.

Update: The very next day my songwriting session, using the principles discussed in this post gave rise to 3 songs, all recorded and posted on the FAWM website in about one and a half hours.